…'Til the Fat Lady Sings

There is a working Democratic assumption that Democrats are on the verge of something big, that come November the American people are going to want -- and will produce -- a sweeping change in the makeup of the national government. Needless to say, there is a lot in the historical record and the current political environment to support that contention, but you don't have to go back very far to understand that Election Day mechanics will be at least as important as the political dynamics of the moment, the real effect of which cannot be measured until Election Day, anyway.

Democrats envision a near future in which Nancy Pelosi is the first female Speaker of the House, Harry Reid the Senate Majority Leader, and George W. Bush the lamest of lame-duck presidents, one who will have to spend his last two years frustrated by a Democratically controlled Congress. These fervent hopes are based on the cascades of bad news that seem to be washing over the Bush White House. A front-page headline in The Washington Post this week read: "Bush to Restate Terror Strategy." I couldn't escape the echoes of all those crooked corporations forced to restate their earnings once their shady, sleight-of-hand accounting gimmicks had been exposed. Are we witnessing an Enron on the Potomac?

Americans keep telling pollsters how unhappy they are with the president and his party, and how much they plan to vote for Democrats in congressional elections this fall. The most recent polls show the Dems building their lead in generic congressional balloting to a full 16 points, which means nothing, since congressional races are anything but generic. Still, the environment is so unfavorable to Republicans that it is hard for Democrats not to be excited.

This is especially so since their own internal polling shows that, except on taxes and terrorism, they are beating Bush and the Republicans in every area, and among some of the key demographics. "As dissatisfaction with the President and the Republican-led Congress grows, voters are poised to affect sweeping change," asserts a memo from a respected Democratic pollster and strategist, "The 'sixth year itch,' where voters turn out the party in power is by no means a new phenomenon; only Bill Clinton, in the history of modern campaigns, avoided his party losing seats in the mid-term elections of his second term."

The memo goes on to suggest that since the GOP controls all branches of government, voters may be especially harsh in how they judge the party's failures. "Importantly, independent and undecided voters are noticeably negative in their assessments of Bush and the directions of the country." According to recent polling, 70 percent of independent voters think the country is on the wrong track.

One downside for Democrats, has been the very public anxiety, from inside the party and out, that they are not doing enough to capitalize on the moment. Some of the fears and arguments are familiar: no clear message, unable to compete with the president on national security, and nothing sufficiently distinctive that creates real separation from the GOP in the minds of voters.

Indeed, the bottom-line analysis from the Democratic memo is this: "Democrats should put resources into establishing their credentials on security, while emphasizing Republican failures. … This formula -- capitalizing on the current political atmosphere, presenting a real alternative to the status quo of costly corruption and neutralizing the security issue, while harnessing their strength on domestic issues -- has the potential to give Democrats big gains." (There's a bumper sticker!)

But can anyone say, "Ohio, 2004"? The conditions could not have been less favorable for Bush in the Buckeye State in 2000 -- loss of more manufacturing jobs than any other state in the country during the Bush years, more Iraqi casualties than any other state in the union, blah, blah, blah -- and still he won.

And he won because of a remarkable, under-the-radar ground machine that worked GOP loyalists and the soft middle for about a year before Election Day. In the weeks before the 2004 election, when Democrats were in the door-to-door frenzy in Ohio, the GOP was almost invisible, because they had already found religion about a year earlier.

So Democrats probably want to worry less about message and focus, starting sometime last year, on getting their voters a little more eager to go to the polls. Political environment is not on the ballot, but gay adoption may be.

Among all the good news for Democrats is this sobering fact: Republican loyalists are more loyal than Democratic key constituencies. "Turnout, especially among African-American and Latino voters, is still an issue for the 2006 elections," according to the strategy memo, "While 64 percent of white conservative Christians say they are extremely likely to vote, only 49 percent of African-Americans and 47 percent of Hispanic voters are that sure."